


Voice on Tape

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Aged-Up Peter Parker, Christmas, Ghosts, M/M, Magic, Muddling Through the Holidays, Peter Parker Whump, Post-Endgame, Road Trips, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28441719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Peter starts out on a Christmas road trip to visit Pepper and May in California, but encounters some surprises along the way. For starters, he wasn't expecting Tony Stark to come along. After all, he's been dead for five years.
Relationships: Background May/Pepper, Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 9
Kudos: 90
Collections: Anonymous





	Voice on Tape

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's a little late in the season, but I hope you enjoy this anyway. Differs from cannon because I aged Peter up a few years and assumed Pepper and Tony don't get back together after Civil War.

They’re about an hour outside of Cleveland when the snow starts. It had been threatening to fall ever since leaving Boston early that morning, the sky a heavy gray slate pressing down on the long expanse of highway. When the first wet flecks hit the windshield, Peter’s whole body tenses, and his knuckles go white on the steering wheel. He’s not a great driver in the best of times, and he doesn’t think the Volvo was really designed for winter road conditions.

He should probably turn the radio to something local, try to get a weather report to see if it’s going to get bad, but that would mean tuning away from the comforting hiss of the old cassette tape. He’s just not willing to do that.

Of course Tony notices the strain right away.

“You doing okay there, spiderling?”

Peter flicks his eyes over to him, leaned back casually in the passenger’s seat, dressed in soft worn jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt. The wrinkle of his forehead spells concern, but the tilt of one side of his mouth into an off-kilter smile exudes easy confidence. There may be something wrong, but he’s sure he can fix it.

It’s a struggle for Peter to pull his gaze back to the road, where the first timid snowflakes have transformed into fat white blobs streaking onto the glass. He only looked away for a second, and it’s coming down hard.

“Weather,” Peter says, tilting his chin to indicate the flurry outside. “I’m just not used to driving in snow.”

Tony sits up a little straighter.

“I could take over,” he says. “Spell you for a bit.”

Peter snorts.

“You cannot drive this car.”

Tony grimaces at that, flexes his hands into fists, as though to remind himself.

“Right,” he says. “Right. Sorry. Useless over here.”

Peter sighs, rolls his eyes.

“Not useless,” he says. “Just, I don’t know, talk me through it.”

Tony shifts forward, hand settling on the back of Peter’s seat, just inches from his shoulder. Peter imagines what it would be like if here were to breach that distance – the feeling of broad palm, body heat seeping into bunched muscle. Tony doesn’t move his hand, but he talks to Peter in a low tone with a hint of gravel, and it feel at least a little like a caress.

“It’s just slow and steady, kid,” he says. “Nothing to it. No sudden movements. And if you feel yourself slipping, steer into it, not away.”

“Okay,” Peter says, eyes on the road. “I can do that. You drive in a lot of snow storms?”

Tony hums, considering.

“Not many. But one time in my wilder days I ended up driving myself and a few – er – friends up to Big Bear for a party. I seem to recall I had ideas about skinny dipping and a polar bear plunge.

“Oh god,” Peter mutters, grip on the wheel easing incrementally as he sinks into the other man’s story.

“Anyway, cue a rager and one ice cold dip that did no favors to my manhood. I wound up having to high-tail it back to LA the next morning for a board meeting I had forgotten about. Took the trip down the mountain, hung over, through a foot of snow. Oh, and did I mention the car? A convertible with a top that refused to go up.”

The laughter bubbles up in Peter’s chest. He can absolutely picture a young Tony, sunglasses firmly in place, white knuckling it down a mountain with the wind and snow whipping through his hair. He laughs until he can feel tears trickling out of the corners of his eyes, and when he finally gets himself under control, a little of the stress in his body has eased.

“Well, I’m glad you can find amusement in my pain.”

“Always, sir,” Peter says with a grin.

“Why do I always forget that spiders are cold blooded?”

“Oh, we’re deceptive like that.”

“At least I finally got a smile out of you,” Tony says, leaning back and giving Peter a self-satisfied look. “You’ve had that sour look on your face the whole drive, you know.”

Peter feels the wide stretch of his mouth shrink in on itself. He’d like to allow his body to do the same. Just curl up until he’s nothing but a little ball protected from the world. There’s something to be said for taking an armadillo strategy.

“Not chipper enough for you?” he says, unsuccessful at keeping the bitterness from his voice.

Tony tilts his head at him, presses his lips together.

“You used to like to spend time with me. Remember? I’d have to kick you out of the lab so you wouldn’t fall face-first into your chemicals and go all Harley Quinn on me.”

“Wait,” Peter says. “If I’m Harley Quinn, what does that make you? The Joker?”

“Aw, c’mon kid,” Tony replies in a wheedling tone. “You know I’m your puddin’.”

Peter’s jaw goes slack at that. He flicks his eyes over to see the self-congratulatory smirk suffusing Tony’s face.

“Oh, fuck off,” he says even as the other man bursts into laughter.

“So not going to tell me what’s got you so grumpy then?” Tony asks once he calms himself. “You actually can talk to me, you know.”

“I know,” Peter says. The words burn in his throat, and he doesn’t know how to let them out. “I just …”

“Please?” Tony says, voice soft and small.

It’s too much. It’s all too much. When the words come, they’re embarrassingly wet.

“It’s just, you couldn’t have come back and ruined, like, Arbor Day for me forever? Did it really have to be Christmas?”

Peter’s been here before. He knows how the month of June brings a heaviness to the air because that’s when his parents’ plane crash happened, how the second week of March will always leave he and May walking around like joyless zombies because that’s when Ben … The point is, he knows how it will be. How Christmas carols and twinkle lights and gently falling snow will now forever be covered with a layer of grief-tinged ash. Because the devilishly handsome, genius, irrepressible Tony Stark is dead. Has been for nearly five years. And here he is, the five days ‘til Christmas, haunting Peter like they’re in some sort of grim Dickensian tale. And Peter? Peter would really like to know why.

###

The package had come the day before he was set to fly out to Malibu to see May and Pepper. After years of rentals, they had finally found what they deemed the perfect place, a 1970s-era beach-front villa with enough clean-lined minimalism for Pepper and enough old-school kitsch for May. Having set up their perfect home, they wanted to host Peter for a proper family Christmas.

Peter had wrapped up his final classes, had one last meeting with his thesis advisor and was in the middle of a chaotic flurry of packing when the doorbell rang and he encountered a very harried currier who shoved a clipboard into his hands to sign. Fair enough. A week to Christmas probably wasn’t the most peaceful time of year for a delivery guy.

The envelope he received was nondescript manila with his name and address typed on the front and no return label. It was curious but not extraordinary. He thought it might be something from Ned, who was spending winter break with his extended family in Hawaii.

But when he had ripped open the envelope and tipped the contents out onto his kitchen counter, Peter’s heart stopped.

It was just a simple white envelope, but the slanted, spiky handwriting was instantly recognizable and instantly devastating. His name in Mr. Stark’s handwriting. “Peter Parker” in big, bold letters, and then below that: “12/19/28.”

Peter hadn’t thought of him as Mr. Stark in ages. It had been Tony, just Tony, in his mind for years, at least since he turned 18 and the man made an effort to make Peter’s internship something more than just a piece of paper. They spent too much time together – labs and movie nights and days out together that Tony laughing called “field trips,” but Peter secretly thought of as dates.

But seeing his handwriting like that brought him back to the old days, when they barely knew each other. When Mr. Stark thought taking away the spidey suit would keep him out of trouble, and gave it back after he learned different. That same handwriting on a brown paper bag …

Peter’s first reaction was to take a stumbling step backwards. He crouched down and put his face in his hands. What, hiding? From a letter? But yeah, he totally was. After he had taken a moment, he crawled back toward the counter, raised himself up so his eyes just peeked over the edge of the Formica.

Then he wimped out and called Rhodey.

“I told him not to do that,” Colonel Rhodes groaned when Peter explained the delivery.

“You knew about this?” Peter hated the way his voice quavered when he spoke.

“He … Mentioned it,” Rhodey hedged. “Back, you know, before. When he was still working through all the time travel stuff. Said that just in case things didn’t go to plan, he was going to leave you with one last epic Christmas present.”

“Jesus,” Peter whispered, stomach churning.

“He was crazed at the time, Pete. Going on 48 hours without sleep. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen him.”

“I just don’t …”

“You don’t have to open it,” Rhodey said, softly. “Not now or ever. Put it in the back of the closet. Throw it in the trash. Whatever you need to do is okay.”

Peter nodded, realized Rhodey couldn’t hear that over the line, then said “Okay.”

“You want me to come there, kiddo? I could be in Boston in a couple hours in the suit.”

“No,” Peter said. “No, I’ll be fine. I think I just needed to freak out at someone. Thanks, man.”

“Anytime, Pete. You good now?”

“Yeah, good.”

Of course he opened it. There’s no way he could do anything else. Working hard to keep his breathing steady, Peter ripped the envelope open and shook its contents out onto the counter.

The results were initially confusing. There was no letter or any form of explanation, just an old cassette tape, clearly a homemade version with a line-ruled cover. Mr. Stark’s writing across it just read “Play Me.” Beside the tape, there was also a set of car keys on a tiny silver ring.

Peter’s eyebrows crept together as he reached for the keys. They jingled against one another as he lifted them to eye level. Then a thought occurred, and he went to the window. Sure enough, parked directly in from of his apartment building was a cherry-red vintage sports car with a long, streamlined nose and a giant matching red bow on its hood.

“Seriously, Tony?” Peter whispered to himself, heart constricting alarmingly in his chest. “What are you up to now?”

He canceled the flight that was supposed to take him out to California and let May and Pepper know he’d be a few days late, but would definitely be there for Christmas. May did not seem particularly comforted by his explanation of “Something came up,” but it’s all he could give.

Peter finished packing his bag, then tried to catch a few hours of sleep. Before the sun even properly rose the next day, he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his new car. He gripped his hands reflexively on the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition, pulled the cassette out of its case and slotted it into the tape deck. It’s an anachronism for the car – a 1965 Volvo P1800, Peter had to look it up – But Tony never minded messing with history a little, so not that weird.

The car rumbled to life, but only static emerged form the tape as Peter pulled out into traffic and headed toward I-90.

He was just starting to think that the tape was faulty – that something happened to erase whatever recording it held in the years since it was made – when it gave a click and he heard someone clear their throat.

Peter’s mouth went bone dry and his pulse rabbited in his temples.

“Hey, kid.”

The sound on the tape was crackly with age, but the voice that came through the speakers was unmistakably Tony. It had felt like the first time Peter got shot, the sound ripping and burning through the meat of him with all the power of a bullet.

“Fuck,” he wheezed.

“So, if you’re hearing this it means things didn’t exactly go to plan with old mauve and murder-y. And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I had all these big plans for us, you know? After I got you back. Well, maybe not actually big plans. They mostly involved us blowing shit up in the lab, if I’m being honest. But, hey, it’s the little things, right?”

“Sounds pretty good,” Peter whispered to himself, bitterly.

It’s exactly what he’s wished for most. Long, lazy days with Tony in the lab. Fucking around, trying out off-the-wall ideas and – yes – occasionally blowing shit up. Just like they used to when Tony wasn’t pulled away on SI business and Peter wasn’t bogged down by homework.

“Yeah, I thought it sounded good too,” Tony’s voice said, tinny in the old speakers. “Guess I fucked that up. But I had to leave you with something, right? So I thought one last hurrah. An epic Stark and Parker road trip, just like one of those really old movies you like.”

Peter shook his head and blew a puff of air out of his lips.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said.

“Plus,” the voice on the tape added. “I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to give you one more really extravagant gift. Hope you like the car, by the way. It was one of my first.”

There was a sigh on the tape, a pause, and Peter could hear a telling tinkling in the background, ice cubes on glass.

“It always was one of my favorite things.”

“Of course it was.”

“Not the car, Cracker Jack,” Tony said, anticipating Peter’s line of thinking maybe too well. “Giving you things was my favorite. Especially big things. Things that were a little too much. You turn this perfect shade of pink all over, and you make this face. It’s like half scowl, half smile because you can’t decide if you’re angry or flattered. Fucking adorable.”

Peter felt the flush rising from his chest, up his neck and into his cheeks. He remembered the kind of gifts Tony used to give him. The personal holo array for his 18th birthday, the helper bot he was gifted for graduation, the surprise Christmas trip to Italy for him and May the year before he …

“There it is,” Tony said. “That look. I should probably like that look a little less.”

“There’s no look,” Peter said.

Somehow he wasn’t surprised when he caught movement in the corner of his vision. When he turned his head, there was Tony, leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head, showing off his biceps to devastating effect.

If there had ever been a time to lose touch with reality, this was it. Kind of amazing it didn’t happen earlier. Peter wasn’t frightened. He felt peaceful about it. Nothing wrong with a little fantasy, right? Sometimes you need it.

“Definitely a look,” the man beside him says.

“Shut up,” Peter said, attempting to will away his blush.

It doesn’t work, but the look he gets from Tony – eyes dark and steady and heavy as they skim across his skin – makes it almost worth it.

###

“I did, actually.”

“What?” Peter asks, tone and jaw tight.

“Have to ruin Christmas,” Tony expounds. He talks with his hands, as ever, moving them in dramatic arcs. “Doctor Weirdsmobile said the solstice was astronomically significant for this sort of thing. I mean, I guess I could have just … Not? Maybe that would have been – “

The tires screech alarmingly as Peter tugs the car over onto the graveled shoulder of the road, sending up a slurry of mud and slush. Once they’ve skidded to a rocky stop, he tugs off his seatbelt and turns his entire body to face the apparition in the car.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says.

Tony’s eyes creep up his forehead and he settles back against the window.

“Even if it were,” he speaks low and steady.

“It’s not,” Peter insists, putting as much finality into his words as he can.

He’s stricken by the idea that Tony might just … Go. His throat is tight and aching when he tries to swallow.

“It would be okay,” Tony finishes, despite his protest. “I sort of hijacked you here. You’ve probably got plans.”

“I don’t.”

“So if you need to – “

“TONY!”

Tony’s jaw closes with a sharp click of teeth. He waits.

“All I want is you,” the words tumble from Peter’s mouth, so much truth. Too much. “Around,” he finishes, lamely. “All I want is you around.”

It’s awkward, and probably transparent, but Peter can hardly care right now. Tears prick at his eyes, though he fights them back to stare intently at the face before him. The one he thought he’d never see again with this much life and animation.

“You got me, kid.”

Peter nods once, settles back in his seat.

“Good,” he says, finally able to suck a full breath into his lungs. “That’s good.”

They sit in silence for a long beat, the only noise Peter’s too-harsh breathing. As they sit, though, something clicks in his brain.

“Doctor Strange?” he asks, disbelieving. “You got help from Stephen Strange?”

“Yeah, well, Dumbledore sort of owed me one,” Tony says. “So he helped me set this up.”

“It’s a spell?”

“Something like that,” Tony says, rubbing at the line of his beard. Peter would like to do the same, run his fingers along the sharp edge of that jaw. His fingers itch for it. But he’s almost certain that if he tried all he would feel is air.

“So, the car, and the tape and everything. It’s all … Magic? You hate magic.”

Tony shrugs.

“Not when it gets me here, I don’t. To be fair, I’m not totally sure how it all works. Strange did a bunch of his weird finger-wavy shit. Also he suggested the tape. I wanted something a little more high-tech. Hologram or something. I could have been a force ghost, but apparently magic and technology don’t mix well. Cassette tapes are just obsolete enough to not count.”

“Wow.”

“I know. I was offended too. Obsolete. Pah.”

Peter doesn’t really believe it. On the list of possible causes for Tony’s sudden reappearance, actual magic is way down the list. At least below fever dream, a mental breakdown and hallucinations brought on by carbon monoxide poisoning from this damn car. But it’s a nice thought anyway. Tony working so hard to get back to him.

“You’re not obsolete,” he says. “I need you to navigate.”

He finds an old, wrinkled map in the glove compartment and lays it out on the dashboard for Tony without commenting on why he can’t do it himself, then puts the car gently back into gear and pulls back onto the road.

Not long after, the now familiar hiss and click of the cassette tape in the player is replaced suddenly and dramatically with the wailing and shredding of a guitar.

Peter jolts in his seat and pulls the wheel instinctively to the right. The music is temporarily overwhelmed by the roar of the tires on the rumble strip.

“What. The. Fuck.”

“Road trip music!” Tony says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Can’t have a road trip without the right tunes.”

Peter scowls at him.

“Mean,” he says, succinctly. “You’re mean.”

Tony just points at the radio, incredulous.

“Back in Black,” he says. “This is a great song.”

Peter narrows his eyes, makes a calculation.

“Right,” he says with a nod. “I love Led Zeppelin.”

Tony’s expression turns sorrowful.

“That hurts, kid. Really it does. It’s like I taught you nothing.”

Peter just laughs. As they drive on he flicks his eyes over to the side every now and then to watch Tony bobbing his head and mouthing along to the words of “Enter Sandman” and “What About Love.” His face is alive with the music and his fingers tapping along the window ledge to the rhythm.

When he gives in and starts belting out “What about love? Don’t you want someone to care about you?” in a powerful falsetto, Peter can’t help but join in.

It’s already getting dark as they pass through Cleveland, and the snow doesn’t let up. Peter could swear it’s coming down harder every minute.

While it’s still a little stressful, Tony’s presence is comforting as the music fades to more hisses and pops on the tape, and he coaxes information out of Peter.

He tells stories he doesn’t intend to tell about his undergrad years – his first college party when he discovered the true lethal potential of goldschlager and puked gold bits all over his date’s shoes; the time he started a fire in the dorm laundry room because he was using it as a makeshift lab space to make web fluid, and mixed up the calculations after an all-nighter studying for a final; convincing his freshman-year roommate that he was a Spider-Man themed stripper so that he didn’t have to hide his patrolling.

“Now that is an image,” Tony says in a tone that lingers on Peter’s skin and makes the hair on his arms stand up.

“The only problem was when he tried to hire me for his sister’s 21st birthday party,” he replies.

“How did you get out of that one, spiderling?”

Peter shrugs, heat building in his cheeks and in the tips of his ears.

“I took the gig,” he says. “Tips kept me in Armando’s pizza for a month.”

Tony’s eyes go wide, and a hand comes up to cover his mouth.

“I just … Need a minute,” he says, letting out a shocked laugh.

“I don’t know why I told you that.”

“Too late. I _know_ things.”

“Stop thinking about it.”

“That is entirely out of my hands now,” Tony says.

Once they’re past the slight back-up of city traffic, Peter stops to grab food. He’s aware the car should need gas by now, but the needle for the tank still hovers at two-thirds full. It hasn’t really moved since he started out this morning, and the engine hasn’t showed any signs of sputtering yet. _Part of the magic?_ He wonders, hopefully. Or maybe a sign that none of this is happening anywhere but in his head.

Whatever the answer, he’s reluctant to do anything that would require killing the car engine. If anything is likely to break this spell, or trance, or dream, surely that would be it. So he ignores the gas needle, and pulls into the drive-thru at the nearest Burger King.

Peter orders two double cheeseburgers and a large fry and pulls into a parking spot with the engine still humming to eat. Tony groans when he unfolds the first cheeseburger from its wrapper.

“This is torture. You’re trying to torture me right now. What did I ever do to you?”

“I thought you might like it,” Peter says, defensively. “The smell, or something. They’re you’re favorite. Er, were … Anyway. Sorry. Didn’t mean to rub it in.”

He bows his head, considering the burger and oozing cheese. Thinks about tossing it and going elsewhere. Somewhere in the back of his mind, when he pulled over, had been stupid memes about summoning circles and what, exactly, you might need to put in one to tempt Tony Stark back from the afterlife.

“You should eat,” Tony says, sighing. “Before it gets cold. They’re shit when they’re cold.”

Still staring at his lap, Peter takes a quick bite, swallows. It lands heavily in his stomach.

“Slowly.”

The tone of voice makes him sit up at attention. Their eyes meet, and Tony’s are dark and hungry.

“Eat it slowly,” he reiterates.

Peter obeys, gaze fixed on Tony as he takes another large bite, then another. He’s not sure how long they go on like that, but the spell of it shatters when he reaches down into the paper bag and finds it’s empty.

He shakes himself, watches at Tony coughs and looks away out the window.

“Oh,” he says. “I, um, guess we better get going.”

“Yep,” Tony replies, crisply. Peter can see how he’s watching him in the reflection of the window.

“You’re still the navigator,” he reminds the other man.

“I won’t steer you wrong, kid.”

In the illumination of the headlights, the falling snow smears into blurry lines until Peter feels like he’s flying through hyperspace on the Millennium Falcon. He tells Tony as much, and it makes him laugh and loosen when Peter remembers to call them “Those really old movies,” just like the first time they discussed Star Wars.

He follows the directions Tony gives him, turning where he’s instructed and not paying much attention to the green directional signs they pass. They’re mostly obscured by ice and snow anyway. Peter takes it slow because of the freeze, driving at a grandpa’s pace along the slick, slushy highway.

There’s hardly anyone else on the road, and everything feels abandoned and quiet. The car is filled with the crackle of the tape in the player and the _shushshushshush_ of the tires on snow.

They talk about Peter’s work at school, and his thesis project developing a new material for wound closures that enhance the healing process. It’s based partially on Peter’s own web fluid design, and incorporates aspects of Tony’s nanoparticle technology. They spend a fair few hours working out a few kinks in Peter’s initial theories.

They’re meandering along the back roads now, state routes with tight clearance and few lights but for the rare occasions that they roll through blips of towns with a couple traffic lights and maybe a gas station with its sign illuminated. They don’t stop at any of these gas stations. There’s no need. The needle on the gas gauge remains stubbornly at two-thirds full.

The accumulating snow clinging to the road, grass, the trees feels like insulation against the outside world. It makes things seem quieter, muffled.

Peter’s world narrows to the warm interior of the car, the tape hissing and clicking, the heat roaring out of the vents making everything feel close and warm, Tony stretching in his seat, neck elongated and back bowed making it feel even closer and warmer.

In this moment, it really does feel like a spell. Something magic and still and perfect. He can feel Tony’s eyes on him, and looks over with a smile already on his lips. He’d give almost anything to take the man’s hand, pull it over onto his thigh and twine their fingers together. But he’s afraid that trying and failing might shatter something, maybe just something inside himself.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Rhodey and I drove from Boston to Miami in a single day?” Tony asks.

Peter laughs.

“No,” he shakes his head. “Why would you ever do that?”

“We were young and dumb,” Tony said. “Spent 24 hours consoling the losers from the Miss Universe pageant 1982, drove back in time for an 8 a.m. statistics class on Monday.”

“You’re insane,” Peter says. “Tell me all about it.”

Tony talks, and Peter lets himself believe, just for the space between one mile marker and the next, that the magic is real, and he’s talking to more than just a fractured piece of his own mind. He does the same for the next mile, and the next, stretching on into the white, unbroken distance.

Dawn breaks, and they stop in a little town called Holland. When Peter pulls into the downtown area, there’s a sign set up in the little snow-covered park in the center of town advertising their annual tulip festival.

He shivers, thinking of the last time he encountered a field full of tulips, and adds Quentin Beck and his machinations to his mental list of explanations for what the fuck is actually happening here. It makes at least as much sense as anything else, even if Beck is supposed to be dead. Peter never saw what they did with the body, after all.

He leaves the car running, but parks and steps out to run into a café on the square so he can take a piss and buy some breakfast. When he comes back with a large, steaming coffee and a cinnamon bun the size of his head, the sight of Tony still in the car is a relief.

“You okay, kid?” he asks, as Peter settles in, a furrow forming between his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Peter says. “Just a little tired.”

He raises his coffee cup in a silent toast, then takes a long glug before putting the car into gear and pulling away.

The road that Tony directs him down is a coastal one, a large body of water visible on his left, a lighthouse in the distance. A few only half-obscured signs help him put it together. They’re diving past Lake Michigan.

“Definitely not the way to California,” he mutters to himself, flicking his eyes over to the still-open map on the dashboard. He thinks he speaks too quiet for Tony to notice, but apparently not.

“What’s in California?”

It’s only then he realizes that, while he gave Tony the job of navigation, the two of them never discussed their destination. He hadn’t thought it necessary. Not if Tony’s only in his head. Peter’s stomach swoops with a sickening hope that he can’t give way to. He can’t.

“Um, May and Pepper,” he says, struggling for normalcy. “They invited me for Christmas.”

“May and Pepper?” Tony asks. He lets out a little puff of a laugh. “Pepp finally bit the bullet. Good for her.”

“What?”

“Years she nursed that crush on Aunt Hottie, but she’d never do anything about it. We bonded over it. Pining after Parkers.”

“They’re, uh, married now,” Peter offers. “Just bought a house in Malibu.”

“Right,” Tony says. “Kids?”

Peter shakes his head.

“They’ve been talking about it. I think May would like it. Keeps saying that I turned out alright, so they couldn’t mess one up too badly.”

“Well, we’ll have to pay them a visit.”

His voice sounds upbeat enough when he says it, but there’s something behind it. A strain, words pulled too tight, that convinces him it’s a lie.

“Not yet though,” Tony continues. “We’ve got to make a pit stop first. Something I want to show you.”

He’s got a smile on his face, and he pats Peter’s seat as though he were giving him a pat on the back, but his eyes are sad and very far away.

“Alright,” he says. “Wherever you want.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “Right up here. And an important question. Top five movies so bad they’re good. What do you say, underoos?”

Peter makes the turn, laughs at the way Tony stares at him and waits for his reply, chin propped on one fist a la “The Thinker.”

“Well, that’s a tough one,” he says.

The sun glints off the snow, sending refracted spots of light around the car as they argue over the merits of Batman and Robin versus Waterworld and the horrors of The Room.

The dusky pink of the sunset over the icy lake is a shock when it comes. Peter feels like he’s been in a trance. He stretches his hands, sore from being wrapped around the steering wheel for so long. The conversation has flowed warm and slightly hypnotic between him and Tony all day, and he can’t quite believe so much time has passed. When he reaches down for his coffee cup, he finds it empty but for the cold, grainy dregs.

For some reason it’s only then the exhaustion fully hits him. He’s been driving for two days now, and yet he didn’t feel it until this exact moment. His eyelids feel heavy, and the dark is coming on again.

Peter feels a kind of panic building in him, because what happens if he falls asleep? This whole thing is so fragile it’s impossible to tell what might break the spell. Turning off the engine, drifting off to sleep, the turning of another day, the wrong word or phrase, too much faith or too much doubt. Anything could do it.

Tony is talking, his voice a warm rumble. It’s like a blanket pulled over Peter’s shoulders, soft comfort that lulls him. His eyes slip closed, replacing the glinting dark outside with a more complete one.

“Pete … Pete … Peter!”

The voice starts soft but builds to a clattering crescendo. Peter sits up straight, eyes flying open and slams the breaks in a screeching, swirling panic.

His hands are shaking uncontrollably when the car finally comes to a stop, breath coming harsh and far too fast, just like his heartbeat. All he can manage to do is to lean over the wheel and wait for his body to realize it’s out of immediate danger.

As the pounding in his ears fades, he can make out Tony beside him, repeating an unvaried litany of “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck …”

Peter takes in one deep breath and sits up, turns toward Tony, who’s curled in on himself, fingers digging into his hair with a harsh grip. He waits for him to unfold.

When he does, Peter sees his eyes are red-rimmed.

“Are you alright?”

Peter nods, feeling it on every inch of his body when Tony’s gaze rakes over him to confirm this.

“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes trained over Peter’s shoulder. “It’s too much. I’m an idiot. We need to stop this now.”

“No,” Peter says, voice so loud he winces. He’s got a terrible feeling that if they stop here it really will be over. He imagines Tony just fading away, leaving him out here in the dark alone. “No,” he tries again. “I can keep going.”

“No, Pete,” Tony says. “You could’ve died just now. It’s not worth it. Just pull over here. Call Rhodes. He’ll come for you.”

“How much further?” Peter asks. “To the thing you wanted to show me?”

Tony growls, the noise coming low from the back of his throat.

“Peter …”

“How far?”

“Maybe another hour,” he says through clenched teeth. “You do not have to …”

“I’m going on,” Peter says, taking a fortifying breath, he places his hands back on the wheel, presses the gas to slide the car forward slowly before picking up speed. “You’ll have to tell me where to turn off, yeah?”

“Just be careful, kid. Please?” Peter can tell he’s conflicted. He clearly wants to reach their destination, wherever it may be, but he’s worried.

“Yell if you see me drift again,” he says, biting down on his lip so hard he can taste blood. The pain does the trick, though. It wakes him right up.

It’s a tense hour and a half. Neither of them talk much. Peter’s eyes are trained sharply on the road and Tony’s, he knows by the weight and heat he feels on his neck, are trained on him. The road is abandoned, dark and empty as far as Peter can see.

The tension is so thick it could be cut with a knife by the time Tony tells him to pull off onto a gravel road marked with a wooden directional sight that only reads “Beach Access.”

The sound of the wheels churning over gravel fills the car for a long moment before the road gives way to sand. Then there isn’t anywhere else to go because the water’s there, lapping at the tires. It’s a small stretch of beach covered in deep snow and enclosed by tall, frost-stiff wheatgrass.

“Where are we?” Peter asks.

“Turn off the headlights,” Tony replies, checking his watch. “It should be any minute now.”

Peter obeys, throwing them into almost complete blackness. The moon is new, and the stars give off almost no light.

He waits in silence for what feels like forever.

“What— “

“Look,” Tony interrupts him.

It starts as a faint green glow on the horizon, hardly noticeable. Then it grows, flickering up and out, dancing across the invisible night winds, green flowing to purple and then deep red at the edges.

“Aurora Borealis,” Peter whispers. “I-I didn’t think there was anywhere in the states where you could see it.”

“It’s rare,” Tony says, leaning forward in a mirror of Peter’s movements to see as far out of the window as possible. “But sometimes you get lucky.”

The same lights that dance across the sky are reflected in the water so that Peter feels surrounded by it. When he looks over at Tony, his face is lit green and gold and pink.

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

Tony looks over at him, and their eyes hook together.

“Yes it is,” the other man whispers back. “It seems …”

Peter watches as Tony swallows thickly, leans closer toward him. He’s making a decision.

“It seems like something you should be able to wish on, doesn’t it? Has to be more powerful than a shooting star, right?”

Peter feels his stomach drop, a stone in a bucket, echoing and hollow. He sits back, looking out at the beautiful sky, but not really seeing. Not anymore.

“What would you wish for?” Tony asks, voice taking on the cadence of a liturgy. “If you could have anything? What would you wish?”

“Don’t,” Peter says, shaking his head. He can’t bear to shut his eyes to the lightshow outside, but he feels a hot tear roll down his cheek. “You already know. Don’t make me say it.”

“Please, Pete?”

Peter lets a sob escape his chest as he turns to Tony.

“Stay,” he says, voice wet and breaking. “Just stay. That’s all I want.”

Tony leans in, tilts his head so he can whisper in his ear. He’s so close Peter could feel his breath if he had any, but there’s only cold. “Need you to wish real hard, kid. Harder than you’ve wished for anything.”

Peter squeezes his eyes closed, feeling the tears squeeze out and leaving hot streaks across his face. He sits back in his seat and wishes.

_Stay,_ he chants to himself. _Stay, stay, stay._

It’s a long, long time before he blinks his eyes open again, scrubs his face and dares look over to the passenger’s side of the car. Tony’s still there, eyes trained on the swirling, glowing sky, and that allows Peter to take in one shaky breath, then another.

The smile Tony gives him is crooked and a little sad, he rubs a hand along the back of Peter’s seat, like he might rub his back after a bad day.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he says. “I know it was selfish, but …”

Peter shakes his head, refuting the idea.

“What happens now?” he asks.

“Now? Now you really do need to sleep, spiderling. And then in the morning, on to California.”

Peter wants to protest, his brain screams at him to do so, but he’s so tired he’s not sure he can move at all. His whole body feels drained and empty.

He leans his seat back and keeps watching the sky even as the lights get fainter and fainter.

“I never told you,” he says. “We’ve been talking shit for two days and I never – You know, don’t you? Knew?”

“Yes,” Tony says. “I knew for a long, long time. You didn’t need to say it.”

“Good,” Peter sighs. “That’s good.”

He feels tears building up behind his eyes again, but he’s not sure he has the energy even to let them out. “Because it’s true.”

“I never doubted.”

Tony moves his hand to hover over the place where Peter’s own is rested on his thigh. He gives a questioning look, and then when Peter nods lets his hand sink down into Peter’s. It feels a little cold, a little tingly, but mostly it feels like nothing. It’s a little pinprick in Peter’s heart.

“Close your eyes,” Tony says.

Peter trains his vision on the other man’s face, his hair greying at the temples and in disarray from his panic earlier, the shadow of worry under his dark eyes.

“I don’t want to,” he says.

“Sleep,” Tony insists. “What can I do to make it easier?”

“Just … Just talk to me?”

Peter closes his eyes, concentrates on the tingle of Tony’s hand over his, and listens as the other man lets out a jolting laugh.

“That I can do,” he says. “Did I ever tell you about the time Dum-E made friends with the Mars Rover?”

With his eyes closed, all the sounds around him are more pronounced. Peter hears the light whistle of the cold wind outside, the familiar click-hiss of the cassette tape, still playing after all this time, the gravel of Tony clearing his throat.

“No,” he says, letting a smile play at his lips. “I think you might be making that up just to make me happy, but I don’t think I care. Tell me.”

“It is true,” Tony insists. “He commandeered US satellites. Distracted the poor thing so much that it fell off a Martian cliff. I had to spend millions making amends with NASA. He just thought it seemed lonely.”

“Start from the beginning,” Peter insists, shuffling back so he’s more comfortable in the leather seat.

“Okay,” Tony says. “So all the trouble started because I made the mistake of leaving the news on in the lab …”

Peter listens to the story, concentrates as hard as he can on the warm rumble of Tony’s voice, tries to bring those vibrations into his bones. To remember.

His words fade as Peter’s drifts, floating farther and farther away until he surrenders completely to sleep.

###

Peter winces at the brightness of the sun behind his eyelids. He groans against the intrusion and takes stock of the various discomforts of his body. His back aches, his neck is sore from sleeping partially upright, and the palm of his right hand is sweaty and overwarm. When he attempts to move it, however, fingers clench around his own, stopping him.

Peter stills completely. There’s a palm against his own sweaty one – callused and work-rough. While he holds his breath, a thumb rubs gently against his own. It can’t be. It can’t. He feels himself tremble under the touch.

The car is quiet and cold, and Peter figures the engine must have died sometime in the night, winter conditions and strain finally too much for it. Which means there’s nothing left to keep the tape playing, to keep whatever it’s magic was going.

But that thumb keeps moving against his, drawing little whirls against his skin.

“Morning, Pete.”

Slowly, Peter opens his eyes, sticky with sleep, and looks down at his hand. Large, blunt-nailed fingers tangle in his own. He follows the hand up a wiry, muscled arm, up to the cuff of a worn t-shirt. When he allows himself to lift his gaze upward, Tony is beaming at him.

Peter squeezes his hand so hard that he sees the other man wince.

“How …”

He doesn’t bother to finish the question or wait for an answer. Instead he launches himself at Tony, landing with a satisfying thud and “oomph” in his lap, legs on either side of his thighs. Tony’s arms come up and wrap around his waist, pulling him even closer. Their foreheads meet and Peter pauses. He can feel the warm puff of Tony’s breath against his cheek, see the shape of it hover white in the cold air of the car.

_Real._ This is Real. He crashes his mouth against Tony’s in a messy kiss. Their teeth clack together, and there’s a little too much tongue until Tony’s hand comes up and wraps around the back of his neck, steadying him and guiding the kiss into something gentler. He licks into Peter’s mouth and lets their tongues slide together slow, tantalizing.

He presses in close and lets his hands sink into Tony’s hair, soft and a little tangled.

“This is okay, right?” Peter asks, breathless, in between kisses.

“Perfect,” Tony breathes. “This is perfect.”

His lips tilt up against Peter’s and nips at his bottom lip.

“God, sweetheart, I knew you could do it. If the universe owes anyone a solid, it’s you.”

Peter pulls back, though not far. His forehead is still pressed against Tony’s.

“It really was a spell,” he says, relishing how he can feel Tony’s chest move up and down against his own, their breaths mingling in the close press. “It wasn’t just in my head.”

“It was a long shot,” Tony admits after a beat. “Gandalf said the odds were against it. But there was still a chance. I thought it was worth taking.”

He hooks a finger underneath the collar of Peter’s shirt, and is about to pull him back in when Peter puts a hand against his chest.

“Wait,” he says. “This isn’t like a Cinderella, disappear at the stroke of midnight thing is it?”

He feels his stomach constrict at the possibility.

“Uh-uh,” Tony shakes his head. “Wouldn’t do that to you. I swear. I’m here as long as you’ll put up with me.”

“Never letting you out of my sight again,” Peter says, moving his hand and brushing their lips together.

They kiss until the air between them turns steamy, and the windows fog over. If Peter lets a few more tears leak out, Tony doesn’t say anything when he tastes salt, just digs his fingers deeper into Peter’s hips and kisses him harder.

Eventually the cold forces them apart. Tony rubs at Peter’s icy hands.

“Engine dead?” he asks.

“Stone cold,” Peter confirms.

“Well, I guess we better start walking, huh? You call Rhodey and tell him we need a rescue. We’ll walk to town. Can’t be too far, and I need a gallon of coffee and a stack of pancakes the size of my head.”

Peter places the call while Tony goes through Peter’s bag in search of something a little warmer than his t-shirt to wear. The sweater he finds is too tight across his chest and arms, but Peter’s not complaining about that.

They crunch across the snow-covered beach until they find where the road starts, its elevation a little higher and snow drifts a little less severe. When they reach it, Peter takes a look back at the car, still and idle on the abandoned beach with waves lapping at its tires.

When he turns back, Tony’s grinning at him, one hand shielding his eyes from the bright sun glinting against the snow. The other hand is held out to Peter, palm up in offering.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Ready.”

Peter takes it, relishing the feeling of solid fingers twisting through his own. They head out through the snow, hand in hand.


End file.
